Abstract

In e‑government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceived risks. Trust makes citizens comfortable sharing personal information, make online government transaction, and acting on e‑ Government advices. Thus, trust is a significant notion that should be critically investigated to help both researchers and practitioners to understand citizens' acceptance to e‑Government. Prior research in trust has focused mainly on consumer's trust in e‑Commerce. Most of existing literatures on trust in e‑government focus on technical perspective such as PKI. This paper contributes by proposing a conceptual model of citizens' trust in e‑ Government. The proposed conceptual model of citizens' trust in e‑government is integrated constructs from multiple disciplines: psychology, sociology, e‑commerce, and HCI. The research is aimed also to develop items in order to measure the theoretical constructs in the proposed model. The pool of items is generated based on literature review. Q‑Methodology has been utilised to validate the generated measurement items. The outcome of two Q‑sorting rounds resulted in developing a survey instrument for proposed model with an excellent validity and reliability statistical results.

Abstract

In the last twenty years most African Governments have embarked on health sector reforms sponsored by international partners. Conceived under New Public Management, the majority of these reforms leverage information technology to decentralise hierarchical structures into more information efficient organizations. The paper illustrates the case study of health management information systems in Kenya in order to better understand how the enactment of information technology has influenced the organisational outcome of New Public Management reforms within the health sector in Kenya. The case study provides a longitudinal account of how the adoption and usage of information technology within two health management information systems of Kenya Ministry of Health has affected the implementation of NPM reforms. Data collection and analysis have been framed within an institutionalist perspective viewing different agents acting under the pressure of competing logics (New Public Management and Old Public Administration) at three main levels of action: the macro or policy level (e.g., formal policies), the meso or organisational level (e.g., professional norms and management), and the user or agency level (e.g., IS users' routines). The case study has shown that NPM institutions were not supported by coherent actions unifying all actors involved in the restructuration of health information systems in Kenya so that IT enactment was not consistent across the health information system giving way to structural changes that were not aligned with what was envisaged in the reforms. Findings point to the rhetoric behind certain reform discourses by main actors involved, particularly, at the macro‑policy level. The paper calls for a stronger source of political legitimacy to support discourses around public sector reforms so that through the right competences and systems of values at the meso level information technology can be used as a catalyst for a more consistent implementation of the reforms. New discourses around the potential of IT should be more aligned with certain institutions underpinning the practices of policy makers at the macro level inducing Government echelons to legitimize IT at the macro‑policy level.

Abstract

Voting is regarded as one of the most effective methods for individuals to express their opinions on a given topic. Electronic voting (e‑Voting) refers to the use of computers or computerised voting equipments to cast ballots in an election. e‑Voting performed over Internet can be universally accepted in the upcoming years due to the fact that Internet plays a key role in people's lives. The DynaVote e‑Voting protocol claims that it is practical over a network since it does not use complex algorithms and has no physical assumptions such as untappable channels, whereas fulfilling core voting requirements such as privacy, accuracy, uncoercibility and individual verifiability. Software development requires a considerable amount of time and money. Therefore, in order to utilise all resources, the prototype implementation gains more importance as it gives quick feedback about the practicality of the system. This paper presents a prototype implementation of DynaVote e‑Voting protocol over the Internet. Since DynaVote relies on Pseudo‑Voter Identity (PVID) scheme, which is an unlinkable pseudo identity mechanism, the prototype includes implementation of a PVID scheme component as well. The main outcome of this study is to prove that DynaVote protocol over Internet is practical and applicable in real life and to illustrate that PVID scheme provides unlinkability. This study also contributes some improvements in DynaVote e‑ voting protocol. Furthermore, this paper analyses how the prototype fulfils some electronic voting system requirements such as efficiency, transparency and mobility.

Abstract

Transparency and effectiveness are emphasized as two positive consequences of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Courts. Indeed, ICT expanded the possibilities of access to information and judicial decisions, as well as its use especially in acts of distrainment, have given greater transparency and effectiveness to the judicial acts. In Brazil, federal, state and labor courts have web sites where judicial information is disclosed and their decisions are published. Moreover, they have agreements with the Federal Revenue Secretariat, the Central Bank and the National Register of Automobiles that allow them to implement all acts of distrainment. However, not all Courts are at the same stage as to the use of ICT because, on one hand, their web pages do not have all the features available and, on the other hand, their users are unable to explore the full potential offered by the new technologies. Delivering a diagnosis of the existing offer in the Courts' web sites and of the use of their agreements with other public services is the first task that is being proposed here. This paper intends to examine how such things are changing the judicial function and, in particular, the figure of the judge, in addition to contributing to a new insertion of the Judiciary in the society.

Abstract

This article presents an explanatory analysis of an e‑ Youth City Council project held in the town of Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, Catalonia, during the year 2008. The main objectives of this programme were to increase citizen participation, improve good governance and through it, the possibility of consolidating and strengthening democracy by ICT use. This case study was based on a survey of 628 young people aged between 14 and 18. The aim was to motivate and enable them to play an active role in politics and to take up positions of genuine authority and responsibility, within local decision making, as pre‑voting citizens. In this way, the young people engaged to develop all stages of the electoral process, participated in an e‑voting system and were empowered in local government for 15 days. In this case polity was translated into practice and created a successful partnership between young citizens and the local political parties. The focus of this ICT research was, basically, which tools the youngsters used and the influence it had on electorate participation In this way, the ICT acquired a new perspective relating to this study group who are considered a generation raised in a computerised era and who are leaders in the fields of innovation and communication, used as a common tool in their social life and work. The analysis is described and evaluated by explanatory variables such as; population, age, ICT use and access, number of voters and abstentions, the ajuntamentjove.cat website , political party blogs, electoral campaign spots and meetings, the electronic voting system and finally the video " Youth Government Constitution" broadcast by internet into the school classroom. Electronic voting has been incorporated as a pilot test, consisting of a voting system of closed lists with a choice of up to two preferential candidates.

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are growing worldwide and changing many facets of modern life. Yet the digital divide persists with developing countries far behind. The low integration of ICT in emerging economies restricts opportunities in many fields of development. This paper presents a case study of ICT development in North Africa. It shows how the Fez e‑Government Project (eFez), through government and academic collaboration, has assisted and transformed many of Morocco's development challenges such as organizational misbehaviours and ills of bad governance in local government offices.

Abstract

One‑stop public services and single window systems are primary goals of many e‑government initiatives. How to facilitate the technical and data interoperability among the systems in different government agencies is a key of meeting these goals. While many software standards, such as Web Services and ebXML, have been formulated to address the interoperability between different technical platforms, the data interoperability problem remains to be a big challenge. The data interoperability concerns how different parties agree on what information to exchange, and the definition and representation of such information. To address this problem, the Hong Kong government has released the XML Schema Design and Management Guide as well as the Registry of Data Standards under its e‑Government Interoperability Framework initiative. This paper introduces how the data modelling methodology provided by the Guide can be used to develop data interfaces and standards for e‑government systems. We also discuss how the Macao government has formulated their data interoperability policy and has applied the Guide in their situation.

Abstract

Governments in emerging nations are relying on information technology as an important tool for their sustained development. Hence, it is an imperative to understand and influence user's acceptance and diffusion of e‑Government services among citizens. This study makes use of the electronic tax filing and payment system in Mauritius, as an example of an e‑Government service, to integrate two leading models (TAM and DOI) in order to explain user's intention to adopt and continue to make use of the electronic tax system. The main survey instrument, a structured questionnaire was used to capture the perceptions and intentions of users of the system. Moreover, locally this area is a fairly un‑researched one and will be explored in light of the context and culture of Mauritius. This paper is expected to 1) contribute to the literature by explaining the factors which affect e‑ government acceptance and diffusion in the perspective of an emerging economy; and 2) identify those factors which practitioners (and the Government) could consider in their endeavour to promote the acceptance and diffusion of e‑Government services.

Abstract

In recent years, e‑Government interoperability has been a fascinating research and development area in order to facilitate the seamless exchange of information across government sectors. Many researchers have focused on the designingadopting of Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIFs) and of Enterprise Architectures (EAs) for implementing the interoperability. However, merely adopting the GIFs and EAs would be insufficient since there have been several strong obstacles and barriers on the road to its achievement in the field of e‑Government, such as human, semantic and technical issues. In fact, the successful implementation in government interoperability needs more practical and implementable approach. This paper firstly describes those obstacles and barriers with the solution and guideline to overcome them. We propose towards more practical approach covering three dimensions of interoperability: Business, Semantic, and Technical. The approach, is called 'Interoperability Practical Implementation Support (IPIS)', considers the adoptiondevelopment of integrated three components: a set of tools, an interoperability repository, and a knowledge based system. The set of tools were designed to supporting the three interoperability perspectives; the tool for modelingspecifying business processes of an organization based on UMM, the semantic tool for standardizingharmonizing data based on UNCEFACT CCTS, XML Naming and Design Rules, and Recommend 34, and the technical standards usage support tool. For reusability, the IPIS was designed by considering the adaptation of five interoperability repositories: business process, data standardized set, XML Schema standard, web services and technical standards. The knowledge based system integrates the knowledge resources that consist of a collection of best practice cases, ontological concepts in semantic technologies, and the related frameworks. The paper presents the overall methodology and the architecture of IPIS with the three components. By adopting the IPIS, the design, development and implementation of interoperable systems in e‑Government can be practically addressed.

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to model ontologies for the e‑Government domain as a basis for an integrated e‑Government environment. Over the last couple of years the application of semantic methodologies and technologies in the e‑Government domain has become an important field of research. A significant number of these approaches aim at automatic service discovery and service orchestration (Lu et al. 2004) (Crichton et al. 2007) by adding and utilizing semantic annotations to web services. In contrast to these approaches it was our idea to use semantic methodologies in a more forward‑engineering manner â€” to create a semantic model first and to use this model e.g. for service selection but also as basis for the automatic generation of "intelligent" web forms. Thus the ontologies can be seen as a model that forms the basis of a Model Driven Architecture (Miller et al. 2001) approach to e‑Government. That is why we call it Ontology Driven e‑Government. The principle is rather straightforward. Every public service is semantically modeled and contains references to the required input elements. Any constraints on the service input element â€” also known as preconditions â€” can be expressed by semantic rules and evaluated by semantic reasoners. This allows for an automatic creation of (web) forms and interactive plausibility checks of data gathered from the user. Instead of scattering logic over numerous functions and procedures in all possible layers of an application, it is now consistently kept in the semantic model. Another key advantage of this approach is that the knowledge of public services becomes available in a machine processable form which allows for much more than just forms creation. Discovering the citizen's actual goal is one of these use‑cases and is actually a very central and important step. When developing the idea of ontology driven e‑Government it was one main idea to achieve a strong decoupling between the form solution and the backend. Such a decoupling can be achieved by transforming the input data into a common data interchange standard format, which was EDIAKT II (Freitter et al. 2006) â€” an XML Schema definition for the exchange of electronic documents between public authorities in Austria â€” in our case. Following this approach the input data can be consumed by any application supporting the data interchange standard EDIAKT II like the SOA‑backend also proposed in this paper.

Abstract

This paper describes a stages of growth model for e‑Government. The proposed model is comprised of seven stages, which are divided into three phases. The model is based on research into and analysis of Information Systems and Information Communications Technology (ICT) solutions in the Irish Revenue Offices for more than a 50‑year period. It is argued that this model provides a useful template for understanding the growth of ICT in government organisations.

Abstract

Joining‑up is high on the e‑government agenda as this is expected to improve service delivery to citizens and businesses. It requires public and private organizations to cooperate with each other within networks that are formed around public services that cross the boundaries of organizations. Cross‑organizational processes in such a network are called supply chains, aimed at delivering integrated services. The performance of each individual organization within the network influences aspects such as lead‑time and quality of services delivered. In order to effectively integrate the efforts of the various organizations involved, a strategy needs to be in place to orchestrate and manage a service delivery chain. Various types of strategies can be employed. Yet little knowledge is available about which strategies are effective under which circumstances. In this paper we identify four different strategies for managing and orchestrating cross‑organizational service chains. These supply chain management (SCM) strategies are based on literature research and case study analysis. The four strategies are identified based on two dimensions: the level of control (i.e. governance structure) and the architectural approach for systems integration. These four strategies are: merger, orchestra, relay race, and broadcasting. For three of the four strategies, illustrative cases have been found. The strategy selection depends on factors such as the institutional environment, political ambitions and organizational readiness. Furthermore, each strategy has its own merits and demerits. We recommend investigating the relationship between situational characteristics and SCM strategies in further research.